At least three folks who regularly read this blog are vegetarians. Please note there will be pictures of raw beef (not on the animal) below.

When talking with my sister one day in the recent past she shared how her incredible maternal grandmother would buy large cuts of meat and grind her own hamburger. Well, our stand mixer has a grinder attachment, so why shouldn’t I do the same? And now, inspired again by a woman I never knew, I am grinding my own meats from the bent meat shelf.

I’d already ground venison when we took the two bucks this year. We’ve enjoyed venison and beef meatloaf a few times already and will again this week. So I knew out to use the grinder attachment on the mixer and I now knew how to cut the meat to make it grind easiest.

I started with 3.15# of bottom round steak.

I fed it through the grinder, using the larger die, which I know having done this several times now, is just right as compared to the smaller die and easier on the mixer motor. Wearing an apron is critical. Blood does splatter. Well, actually spurt…

I measured it out into 1# batches.

And wrapped it other with other bent meat finds from this trip.

Yes, the date is incorrect. But I figure since it’s going in the freezer, my thinking it is two days older than it is doesn’t matter. Much. The pretty purple sharpie makes up for the error in my opinion.

So, as we use the venison stored this winter, and the extra bent meat put up in paper as well, we’re in good shape.

Like this:

Related

I love grinding my own meat. Sounds like we have the same mixer. I saw a really scary news piece about “pink sludge” that is legally added to ground beef and I was cured. I also grind my own turkey and then freeze it in small packs. And I love the purple sharpie. Now I am going to read about your “bent meat shelf.”

Preston wants to get one of these, so glad to see it works. Fortunately one of his hunting buddies has transformed a tobacco barn into a veritable meat-processing “plant”, so we’ve got venison in any shape or form you’d ever want vacuum sealed. Enjoy!

Check out the bent meat link in the post. It is basically meat about to go “out of date.” My Husband and I jokingly call this section of the grocery “the bent meat shelf.” There are also “bent dry goods” and “bent vegetables.” and bent something else, but it’s not coming to me…

As one of the vegetarian readers of your blog, I thought this post was really interesting. If I ever eat meat again, I’ll definitely get my own grinder attachment. The process reminds me a lot of playing with play dough as a child. I’m pretty sure we had a grinder like tool that made red play dough look like ground beef. 🙂